The Thinning by Inga Simpson

Australian author Inga Simpson has already been to the post-apocalyptic well with her novel The Last Woman in the World. She returns to this vein but from a slightly different angle, and a slightly less dire situation in her Young-Adult styled new novel The Thinning.

It is the near future, Fin is a teenager who lives with her family live off the grid near the Siding Springs observatory in North West New South Wales. But they are forced to go on the run when the authorities come. Those authorities are actually trying to track down Terry, one of a new species of humans called “Incompletes”. Fin’s parents have a plan that is connected to an upcoming solar eclipse. For… reasons Fin is asked to take Terry with her on a mission to be on the top of a certain mountain when the eclipse happens.

This then becomes essentially a teen road trip featuring the resourceful but distrustful Fin and the naïve and odd Terry. Along the way, Fin will reflect on the recent past and the genetic edicts coming from the government which forced her to drop out of school and that has led to experimentation on Terry.

The best aspect of this book lies in Simpson’s descriptions of the landscape. Fin travels from Siding Springs, next to the spectacular Warrumbungles National Park, through the Pilliga forest and across significant landscapes. Simpson is respectful of the Aboriginal connection to this landscape and uses the Indigenous names for the places that Fin passes through. In her reflections, Fin also describes other significant parts of this landscape including the ancient but still extant fish traps at Brewarrina. Given its connections to astronomy and astrophotography, The Thinning is also full of beautiful descriptions of the night sky.

As already noted, this is really YA fare involving young adults on the run, given a mission which involves them constantly having to outsmart the adult authorities. Starting off mutually distrustful but learning to trust each other (enemies to… not enemies). While Simpson makes it easy to care about these two, it is harder to understand the point of their mission (which they actually have little chance of completing at the outset) and, given the seemingly global movement they are fighting against, what impact it would have in the long term.

The Thinning by Inga Simpson

7

7.0/10